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Mandatory Vaccines for School Enrollment? Not in My State!

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Along with the needed school supplies, like pencils, notebooks, bento boxes for lunch, parents have to put one more thing on their back-to-school lists: vaccines for their kids.

Our local Southwest Michigan newspaper (yes, print newspapers still exist) ran an article a few weeks ago reminding parents that their children won’t be allowed to attend school if their vaccinations aren’t up to date.

Most parents follow that mandate without even thinking about it – if there aren’t any options, if vaccines are mandatory, then of course, let’s get our well-child checkup scheduled, let’s get those shots.

Except that the newspaper was wrong.

Vaccines are NOT required for school attendance in Michigan.

Michigan still allows for religious, medical and philosophical exemptions to “mandatory” vaccinations, and cautious parents can obtain a vaccine exemption waiver from their local health department. Whether you have avoided vaccines altogether, simply have one or two you choose to skip or are following an alternative vaccination schedule that puts your daycare or preschool student behind on the recommended milestones, you can still attend public schools and daycares.

Paperwork Required to be Exempt from a Vaccine in Michigan

The waiver used to be a simple piece of paper that you filled out and signed, done. At the beginning of 2015, that all changed. Now parents have to go in person to the health department for a vaccine information session, typically one-on-one with a public health nurse.

It’s required to make an appointment, and you’ll need a newly signed waiver at these points in a child’s school career:

Every year to enter preschool or daycare

Start of kindergarten

Start of 7th grade

Any time you move to a new school district

The health department gets a copy, YOU get the original, and you make a copy for your school. (Glad I just wrote that because I nearly turned in my original to the school without thinking!)

And that’s that. Parent choice, alive and well (for now).

This post is sponsored by WellFuture, maker of VacciShield, a nutritional support for infants and kids during vaccinations. It’s designed to support healthy brain, immune, gastrointestinal and detoxification function during the vulnerable time of vaccinations.

Whatever your view on vaccines, I love that (a) we do live in a world where we can choose all, none or some, and (b) there are options for those who choose vaccines but are wary. ALSO, it’s true that vaccines ARE actually mandatory for a small group of people – adopted and foster kids are required to be up to date on shots. No vaccine exemptions allowed.

What was my Vaccine Education Appointment Like?

I was lucky enough to go last summer for my preschooler, and now that he’s a kindergarten student, I got to go again this summer. (Can you hear the sarcasm drip? I hate making and attending appointments even if I think they’re worthwhile…) Looking ahead, oy, between preschool, kindergarten and 7th grade I think I’ll be going the next five years straight.

Yay.

In all honesty, other than wasting an hour of my life, the appointment was palatable. After about 10 minutes in the waiting room reading the vaccine posters plastered everywhere, I was brought back to the meeting room for another 10 minute wait:

The nurse greeted me pleasantly, and I fairly quickly said that I was just here last year. Rather than start her entire educational session, she began by asking me if I had any questions.

On the spur of the moment, I decided I did. I had seen the documentary Vaxxed earlier the same week and had some pretty powerful takeaways from the film.

I asked, “Have there been any studies comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated children?”

She paused a moment, then answered: “Well, I’m sure there are many,” in a voice clearly meant to brush off the question.

I shot out firmly: “Actually, there aren’t. It’s the standard for all other pharmaceutical medication, but not for vaccines, so that makes me too uncertain. There’s also no testing of the effects of multiple vaccinations in one day, which is what we give our children. I just don’t want mine to be the guinea pigs.”

She blinked a few times. And the appointment went very quickly from there!

Our Vaccine History

I’ve changed what I think about vaccines many times over the course of parenting, but my husband and I continue to say that it’s one of the worst and most difficult decisions we have to make as parents.

My oldest was fully vaccinated until age 5.

His sister had a bit of a delayed schedule, then we petered off.

Number three had just the pneumococcal shot as an infant but is largely unvaccinated since then.

Baby Gabe has not had any vaccines.

All three older kids have had whooping cough with varying degrees of intensity, so we’ve experienced what vaccines protect against. We’re also grateful now for the natural immunity, and although it wasn’t an easy 100 Day Cough by any means, I don’t regret the choices we’ve made.

Mary Voogt of Just Take a Bite, a contributing writer and team member here at KS, has a house full of awful food allergies. She looks back at the timeline of her kids’ medical history, the trajectory of developing allergies, starting to heal from them, getting a round of vaccines, developing dozens more…and she’s certain that her kids all suffer from vaccine injuries.

I wish more people understood that the potential “side effects” of vaccines are not just a low-grade fever for a few hours or some fussiness and pain at the injection site. Vaccine reactions can change children’s lives, forever. So can the diseases against which vaccines offer protection.

What a horrendous decision for parents to have to make:

Put your child at risk of a potentially deadly or debilitating disease, knowing that you could have done something to stop it.

Give your child an untested drug in hopes that they’re protecting from disease but at the same time potentially giving them an autoimmune disease, food allergies, learning disability or –yes, I’m going to say it – maybe autism.

There’s no winning there.

Lately we’ve chosen number 1. If you’re in the camp of number 2, I’ll respect you (more so if you’ve done your research). I’ll also recommend that you grab some VacciShield for your child’s next appointment, because at least you can say that you did something to reduce the potential side effects, that you bolstered your child’s immune function and gut health as best as you knew how.

Before you ask if there are double-blind, placebo-based studies on VacciShield – there aren’t. WellFuture is a small company without the funds to conduct such research, but Catherine Clinton, ND, who formulated the supplement based all of her ingredients on research studies.

We use WellFuture’s infant probiotics daily and I do trust the whole food ingredients in both products. Food to be ingested doesn’t need as much testing as drugs injected, in my humble opinion.

And that’s why I am sticking with the Michigan vaccine exemption:

What I Learned Watching Vaxxed

I’m sure there are plenty of people discrediting Vaxxed because Andrew Wakefield, the scientist accused of lying about autism and the MMR vaccine, was a major part of the project.

In the film, the finger is pointed at the CDC and a handful of government officials, including the Surgeon General, for collaborating to hide data and shift the results of the CDC’s investigation into the vaccine/autism connection.

Both sides have their data, their figures, their recorded conversations…whatever.

For my purposes, I’m happy to throw it all out.

Throw out Andrew Wakefield’s findings that there may be a correlation between a shot of the MMR vaccine early in life and autism.

Throw out the CDC’s findings that vaccines do not cause autism.

What matters in the whole conversation are 3 things:

Vaccines are not tested using double blind placebo studies. There are not studies comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated kids to help us really understand the effects of vaccines.

The effects of multiple vaccines in one day has not been studied.

In 1986, the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act was established, which gives vaccine manufacturers a get-out-of-jail-free card. They will never be held responsible if their product injures or kills someone. The taxpayers will cover it.

That’s the beginning and the end of it for me. I can’t just follow blindly once I know that there are so many questions about how vaccines actually work – my kids aren’t lab rats.

Also, it makes me angry that the pharmaceutical companies have made it so difficult for parents to HAVE choices. When Andrew Wakefield recommended during a press conference that parents ask for the MMR in separate doses until more research could be done, it was a matter of a year or two and suddenly no one was producing single doses, only the triple MMR.

So if you live in Michigan (and most other states), you can obtain an exemption for your child to allow you to make decisions about their vaccinations. I hope and pray that our country does not continue in the direction of California, taking away parents’ right to choose what happens to their children’s bodies.

Do I dare ask? Where are you on the vaccine choice spectrum?

Be courteous in all of your conversation, please, dear readers! Remember that everyone’s life experience is different and we cannot assume anything about anyone else.

About Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

I’m a Catholic wife and mother of four who wants the best of nutrition and living for her family. I believe that God calls us to be good stewards of all His gifts as we work to feed our families: time, finances, the good green earth, and of course, our healthy bodies. I'm the founder and boss lady here at Kitchen Stewardship -- welcome aboard!

48 Bites of Conversation So Far

Sadly, we moved to California last year and no longer have exemptions here. Fortunately, we homeschool so it’s not an issue right now. But if I ever want my kids to attend public school or have them participate in extracurriculars, we will be faced with an impossible decision. I agree with your 3 basic arguments against vaccines, adding that the CDC has called vaccines “unavoidably unsafe”. Why would I choose that for my child if I don’t have to? My oldest was fully vaxxed, on-time, through the end of 2nd grade when we decided to homeschool. Now I think she’s missed 1 or 2 shots she should have gotten since then. My youngest was up to date until about 12 or 15 months, then we moved, and I started learning so much more about vaccines and their risks, about healthy and natural lifestyles, and about God and the Bible. Putting that all together, we paused temporarily in his vaccine schedule until we felt we could make a sound and informed decision, and we finally decided we were done. He is far & away healthier than his older sister. That may or may not have anything to do with vaccines, but why take the risk?

We hold a very similar opinion to you and your husband’s on vaccines. Your three reasons for not vaccinating are exactly the same reasons that we don’t either. Our first two children were fully vaccinated on time according to the CDC schedule. Then I heard Dr. Theresa Deisher (of Sound Choice Pharmaceutical in Seattle) speak at our church in Oregon. Immediately, we quit giving our kids the MMR II, Hep A, and Varicella vaccines because we were morally opposed to injecting our kids with DNA from an aborted baby. As time has gone on, those moral concerns have also turned into safety concerns. Are their consequences of injecting another person’s DNA into our kids? Are we increasing the risk of our children developing autoimmune diseases, autism, cancer? I understand that all angles of vaccines have been studied and there has been no proven link to autism. What we haven’t studied yet, is the effect that this human DNA is having on our kids, if any. That’s why we are following Dr. Deisher’s work closely. Having heard all about the CDC whistleblower case, and now having watched VAXXED, my husband and I have no trust in the CDC or the pharmaceutical companies. (It really peeves me too that Merck pulled the monovalents of the MMR due to decreasing sales. If they really cared about the safety of our children, they would put them back on the market in a heartbeat. But they don’t and they won’t.) Our seventh baby is due next February, and he/she will not be getting any vaccines. That is our choice and I am so grateful that we still have that choice this day in age. We do homeschool, so I’m not as worried about the school mandate, but I do see a time where they will come after us homeschoolers as well. I also wonder if someday insurance companies will drop us if we don’t comply with vaccines. Lord help us!

What I don’t understand is how the medical personnel and general public can still make statements like Katie’s, “Give your child an untested drug in hopes that they’re protecting from disease,” when we see daily instances of vaccinated people getting the disease. What are the vaccines protecting against? I wish people would understand that herd immunity among vaccinated populations (as opposed to natural immunity) is a myth. There is no reason to get the vaccines if they don’t offer protection, and just open your local newspaper or get on Facebook or the national news websites to see that they don’t! We can never make statements like “the vaccine protected my child” because you can’t separate the natural immune system from the vaccine and not everyone who is exposed to a disease, vaccinated or not, will get sick or show symptoms.

This post is click bait to drive traffic for your sponsor, which sells unproven supplements. For all the evidence based practices you promote, this anti-vax stuff is seriously disappointing.

They say your right to swing your arm ends where another person’s nose begins. Not vaccinating is allowing your kids to be vectors for contagious disease in the community and subjecting them to vastly increased risk of illness themselves. No vaccine is 100% effective and some children are too medically fragile to receive vaccines.

I have family abroad where measles is far more common and I refused to travel with my kids until they were old enough to receive the MMR. Would you turn down malaria tablets if you were traveling to an area where it’s endemic? Would you let your kids drink the water in a community with a polio outbreak without a vaccine? Would you risk tetanus if your kid got a deep cut on a farm where horses are kept? Would you risk your child’s hearing and fertility by exposing them to mumps? Would you want to be pregnant without immunity to rubella in a community with active rubella? Would you want your child to suffocate from diphtheria?

These are things that happened every day in pre-vaccine western civilization. We are lucky to live in an era that saves us as parents the anxieties and heartbreak of what are now largely preventable illnesses. There *is* some risk but it’s small, and there’s risk in everything. The science has repeatedly shown *no* connection to autism.

Hi ZB, I appreciate the opportunity for discussion here, although I resent the implication that I would publish an entire post based on my personal and real experience that I think may help other parents just for a sponsor. I’m not a sell-out – I accept sponsored posts only for topics I would gladly write about anyway, for free.

Your rebuttal about punching others is valid – except that no one who is about to punch someone else will open themselves up to great personal risk by not punching them. To give my child a vaccine that may possibly injure them for life (or worse) to potentially protect others from disease, well…as a Catholic Christian, I embrace sacrifice, I do. I will offer up temporal sufferings for the good of others gladly and willingly. But I have a harder time asking my children to potentially have a lifetime of suffering for a chance to save others. It’s just an impossible decision, and I hate it.

I do have experience with one vaccine-preventable disease: whooping cough. Our fully vaccinated 6yo neighbor caught it from my son (which I felt terribly about even though it wasn’t a serious case). His family of course had NO idea he had whooping cough. He could have spread it to countless newborns or fragile individuals, and I realize that we, as partially unvaccinated people, were a part of that, we also have no idea where we got it from. Most likely, someone who was vaccinated. The things with vaccinations is that they train the doctors NOT to look for and recognize these serious diseases. Because whooping cough is less severe in vaccinated children, they are farrrr more likely to be a vector for disease in the community and far more likely to transmit it to children with fragile immune systems. There’s just no black and white, ever, about this topic.

You asked some questions that I believe were meant to be rhetorical, but I’m going to answer them anyway: 1. Malaria tablets – sounds like something I’d take if in that area! 2. A polio outbreak – nope, no contaminated water for us. Would I consider the vaccine if there were polio outbreaks? Maybe. I haven’t researched the spread of polio all that carefully. 3. Tetanus and farms and horses – clean wounds with oxygen flowing are quite a low risk of tetanus, and tetanus is also preventable after the cut takes place, so my actions THEN would be for the best health of my child. I see no reason to take potentially harmful preventative measures now. 4. My children’s fertility is at risk already, simply by living in this chemical-laden world. I take every precaution I can with it. Having mumps isn’t 100% that fertility or hearing is affected, so this question is all a numbers game. To cross reference the % chance of contracting mumps with the % chance that it would be a bad enough case to have lifelong effects (that modern medicine couldn’t treat in the moment) with the % risk of the vaccine…that’s a lot of numbers and guessing. I choose to NOT do something that might hurt them, instead of doing something that might hurt them in an attempt to protect them from something that might hurt them. 5. Rubella is a nasty one – and that vaccine has a sordid history of being created as a result of a baby being killed by its own mother and doctors, so it’s an even touchier subject for me. If my community had active rubella, or zika for that matter, I would be taking a lot of precautions if I was pregnant, including perhaps staying home all the time. 6. Of course no one wants their child to suffocate from diptheria. The families who lost their daughters to the HPV vaccine didn’t want them to die, either. It’s not a fair question.

Count me in as a new subscriber! You are very brave and it is obvious that you are well informed on this issue. Don’t let an internet troll discourage your efforts to help others. If this reader doesn’t agree with you, they can easily avoid your posts.

I am glad to find this website and look forward to reading more of your posts. And even though I don’t see eye to eye with you on everything (I am no longer a Christian), you won’t see me spewing hatred and intolerance for your beliefs or parenting choices.

We don’t vaccinate for the same reasons that you don’t, however, I wanted to reply to the previous poster. Not only do we not vaccinate, but for the first three and a half years of my oldest life we lived overseas in a developing nation. In that time he got rotavirus. I’m not sure what we would do for polio, malaria, etc.. If that ever becomes a concern we will make the decision, but I wish that people wouldn’t assume that the reduction of all preventable diseases are due to vaccines when it has been shown that most of the diseases were already declining due to other factors (clean water, better hygiene, etc…)

We are currently discussing this topic. Our 2 yr old is up to date but now that we have done our research, she wont recieve any more. It makes me sick to think what we’ve exposed her to. We have another on the way and are really researching the ingredients in the shots and the rate of death due to these diseases. There are many shots we plan to refuse but its difficult to ignore all the fear mongoring on both sides. Also, we live in california. We have been planning to homeschool and have no intention of daycare so the law doesnt effect us. But if our situation ever changed, we could be in a bind.

Hi Alexa, I think about that with our oldest too – but we can only work with what we know. It’s an awful scene, isn’t it? Good for you to research each vax on its own; I think that’s very important. Blessings on your research and decisions! Katie

I would gladly start down the path of skipping vaccines based on this article and other research, but my one large concern is: What doctor would see them? It has become such a battle between providers and parents that I’m afraid to even think about joining the non-vaccine camp.

I would love to know if people local have found sympathetic or even supportive physicians in the West MI area.

Hi Cara, Dr. David Sova in Cascade is our family doc and doesn’t even carry all the vaccines, only single tetanus. There are others who are sympathetic as well – I believe Stacy and Donielle both have some on the west side of town. 🙂 Katie

I understand parents of at-risk children (such as those with compromised immune/cancer patients) want to protect their own children by mandating my children (and all others) be vaccinated. However, why does their right to protect their own child outweigh my right to protect my child?

My oldest received the MMR vaccine at the age of 15 months. Prior to that vaccine, he was developing normally. Within a day of receiving the vaccine, he developed a rash and swelling at the injection site. Over the next few months, he stopped babbling. He stopped looking people in the eye. He became obsessed with one or two toys–for hours. He walked on his tiptoes. Early childhood education experts (i.e. special-needs teachers) thought he was autistic.

Naively, I continued to get him and his younger brothers vaccinated on schedule for another 5 years. By that time, internet research was becoming more prevalent and I saw the connection. We never vaccinated again. Today, thanks to excellent nutrition, that young man is planning to graduate high school and go on to college.

Without adequate testing, vaccine safety cannot be determined. There are enough vaccine objectors who would participate (as unvaccinated) in studies. If the vaccines are as safe as the manufacturer’s claim, they should have no problem funding this study (and publishing all results as they become available). Their unwillingness to do so is in itself, suspicious.

Perhaps he was. We never sought an official diagnosis. I homeschooled him at his pace and we made major changes to our diet. Today, he could probably receive a diagnosis of Asperger’s but it would be a mild form. He is still the most sensitive in our family to “unhealthy” foods and 99% of the time, he stays away from gluten. Our experience has made me feel sympathy for those who walk daily with autism, as well as for those parents who think that vaccines are not healthy for their child. It is my hope and prayer that doctors who take the vow to first do no harm will stop automatically “forcing” vaccines on their tiny patients and will determine on a case by case basis if they should be delayed.

Interesting note for Claire (below in the comments) on the MTHFR gene mutation: without having the genetic tests done, I have seen some other tests done that indicates this son has the mutation. It probably came from me (I have the same problem). My father, a Vietnam veteran, is also a probable carrier. He now has Parkinson’s. Having the genetic mutation isn’t bad. Allowing it to get “turned on” and expressing itself is. That is why my nearly adult son is so picky about eating very healthy and staying healthy.

Katie, have you heard of/researched homeoprophylaxis (sp??)? I’d be interested to hear your take on this natural method of “vaccinating” as I agree: there’s a LOT of risk with “traditional” vaccines. I also agree with a comment above: If we were traveling to a place where a disease was wide-spread, I’d look seriously at getting the vaccine. Such hard choices!!

Good for you for talking about not vaccinating! Such a touchy subject, and one I have been harassed for many times. I live in CA and had to spend over $500 to get a medical exemption for my son, and still need to get one for my daughter.

History is repeating itself. Back in the 1800’s they required parents to vaccinate for small pox. Children were dying from the vaccine. If parents refused to vaccinate, they were fined or thrown in jail.

I’m sad for all of thr parents out there who blindly listen to the doctor, and vaccinate without doing their own research.

So far, we vaccinate our children but do not accept the MMR, Hep A, or Varicella vaccines, because these were produced by culturing in a medium that includes cells from aborted babies (specifically two aborted babies). The live polio vaccine (not used in the USA) is also produced in this manner. This information is not secret – it’s written right there in the vaccine insert and also available on the vaccine manufacturers website; sadly, it’s not common knowledge, either. I firmly believe in education and informed consent. I respect any parent’s right to choose what they believe to be best for their child – but I believe they should have accurate and complete information on which to base that decision. I agree with you that it’s a very difficult choice to make. We’ve come to rest in the knowledge that ultimately, it’s God who protects our children. We have chosen to ask Him to protect our children from the vaccines themselves, and to ask Him to protect them from the specific diseases we can’t morally agree to immunizing against. Blessings and grace for your difficult decisions, everyone!

Thanks to vaccines as a parent I do not have to worry about my child getting polio, small pox and a host of other nasty things that only a few short years ago were debilitating and often deadly. As for the whooping cough, if older children or adults get it, it’s not a big deal. If a newborn who hasn’t been vaccinated for it yet gets it, you get a lengthy hospital stay and very very very sick child at best and a DEAD child at worst. Even though not vaccinating is in my opinion deadly and unwise, I do respect parents decisions to not put something into their child’s body if they don’t want to. HOWEVER, if you child is going to a government funded public school with other people’s children, I do agree that vaccines should be mandatory. If parents aren’t ok with this, there are the options of private school and homeschool. There is not enough evidence that vaccines harm a large portion of the people who get them for me to opt out yet. However, this is great evidence to their advantages. I know that a lot of people may really hate on me for writing this and that’s ok. You probably won’t change my mind and I probably won’t change yours. I respect differences in opinion so please respect mine.

Naturally, I am just now noticing a host of typos. Please forgive me grammar nazis and do not assume that I am ignorant because of these mistakes. Just putting that out there because I know how people can be.

I would like to say that even though I am not anti-vaccine I am considering a different vaccination schedule if we have another child. My daughter is 4 and so far she has had all of the vaccines according to her pediatrician’s timeline. I don’t see any reason to give a newborn a hep B vaccine on the day they are born unless a primary caregiver has hep B. We may put that one off for a while with the next one and I am open to considering alternative vaccination schedules. 🙂

Thanks for taking this topic on. The more light we shed on this the better. I also have had serious concerns about vaccines and have been in a constant battle with my ex over them. We are in Cali and I am just praying an injunction is granted before my child hits the next step in school where my personal belief waiver will be invalid.

There are way too many people out there without any kind of credentials to show they are qualified to give advice on medical/body chemistry issues – giving “advice” which is, in fact, only opinion (that they make sound like fact).

I make it a practice to remember this and be very careful whose “advice” I base my decisions on. When it comes to protecting our children, one can’t afford to just believe everything they read.

Thank you for this post. I, unfortunately, live in CA. And the poor decisions made here will be coming to other states soon. Please defend your right to parent your children. I vaccinated all 4 of my children fully. My 5th child had a horrible reaction from her vaccines at 9 months old. After months of declining was diagnosed with Failure to Thrive. She was a perfectly healthy baby up till that appointment. Luckily, breast feeding brought her through and and I never vaccinated again. She is now a thriving 6 year old. Please educate yourselves.

Katie, all three of our kids have a gene mutation that makes them especially susceptible to damage by vaccines. The mutation is called MTHFR, and approximately 40% of the US population has it (but few are aware that they do). Upwards of 90 percent of autistic children have this mutation. I am so grateful to the Lord for a friend who researched vaccines thoroughly for her own children and passed the information along to my husband and I before ours were born. Based on this information we decided to forego vaccination — before we knew we carried this mutation. (It was only while expecting our third that we learned about it.) The probability is high that had we vaccinated, our kids might never have been the same. At the same time, I shudder to think that parents of children with this same mutation (and there are many of them) are being forced to vaccinate them in order for them to attend school. It’s kind of like a game of Russian Roulette — with the state holding the gun to children’s heads.

Ugh. I feel like I can’t even mention the dreaded v-word! I actually had a person tell me that they truly believe that parents who don’t vaccinate aren’t fit to be parents and the children should be removed. Triple Yikes!!! Hopefully that is the only person in the world who thinks that way, but unfortunately, I don’t think that is the case. It is really unnerving to me how crazed people get when you bring up the subject of (non) vaccinating.

To the person above who commented about being careful of whose advice to take, I completely agree. You can’t afford to believe everything you read… especially when what you read is being published by those making the money (pharmaceutical companies). You can’t possibly think that they companies making these big bucks are going to report anything but roses.

I appreciate you having the courage to post this. I agree that it’s one of the hardest parenting decisions! We’ve taken a path similar to yours with our three children. My husband is a trial attorney and I think that tort cases serve an important purpose in protecting the public from companies looking to make money at any cost (contrary to popular opinion). The fact that vaccine manufacturers are exempt from these lawsuits makes me very wary.

I try not get involved in these conversations but I would like to point out that vaccines help keep ALL of our children safe. My daughter received a liver transplant a 7 months. Since she take medications to prevent rejection her immune system is always compromised. She is not allowed to get any live vaccines, while many of you think this is great for her since she is avoiding some vaccines it puts her at a real risk. If she gets anythings – even something considered ‘mild’ like chicken pox it could quickly hospitalize her. I know we all want to put our children first but there are certain things we should strive for as we live in communities and ALL children’s health should come first. I am fortunate to live in California in an area where most people vaccinate and my child’s health and safety depends on it. Just some thoughts from a concerned mom.

Erin, I hear you, completely – and protecting all children is truly the hardEST part of all this for me. I didn’t really address it in this post, but it’s definitely part of it all and a tricky piece of my faith too. Can I potentially sacrifice my own kids’ health to potentially save yours? I can sacrifice a lot as myself, an adult, but my kids are trickier. There’s just no easy answer for me. 🙁

I agree with you. Ultimately it should be the parents choice. If more people did their own research they’d realize how manipulative our pharmaceutical companies have become and how our medical community has been bought to believe whatever they’re selling. One thing you didn’t cover was medical kidnapping, happening more and more as the government (cps), tries to mandate their way of how to raise our own children! Great post , I stand by you.

Really interesting blog post! My family is moving to Grand Rapids in December after 4 years living in the UK! Both my kids were born in the UK so navigating the US medical system with kids is going to be a totally new thing. I’ve been a long time follower of your blog and only just a month ago did it click that I was moving to the same city! I’ve loved reading through your Grand Rapids resources. Thanks!

Vaccines do not prevent disease, they simply reduce the severity (supposedly). The vaccines are the disease itself injected into the body to cause the body to build up immunity to that particular disease. My 4 youngest children, who are still at home ages 6, 9, 12, 13 have never received vaccines. My oldest 7 received vaccines and I regret doing it. I had 2 children come down with whooping cough. One was 15 the other was 1. We do not know where they contracted it but they made it through it and we don’t have any regrets for not having the youngest vaccinated. The sheer volume of recommended/required vaccines should be considered inhumane. I mean starting at birth for Hepatitis??? Seriously??? There is no way I would consent to that. When my older kids where young, I didn’t start vaccines until they were over a year old. And, the government hadn’t implemented the Hepatitis vacs yet. It is crazy!

I have read articles that have stated that aborted fetal tissue has been used in creating these vaccines, namely the MMR, which I do believe causes autism. So, this is my opinion based on my research.

I can understand the worries and arguments about vaccines. However, I have to support them strongly as it doesn’t affect just one child. The herd affect means that more than 80% (depending on the vaccine) of people need to be vaccinated in order to protect those that aren’t or can’t be vaccinated. My daughter is one who couldn’t receive vaccines because her immune system was compromised due to cancer treatments. One child in her school who didn’t receive the MMR got ill. While that child recovered, if my daughter had come down with it, it probably would have killed her. As it was, she missed 2 weeks of school because she was in isolation being monitored for symptoms. Someone else’s decision could have cost my 6 year old her life.

Hi Lisa, Ugh, I’m so sorry that Mabel had to miss school for so long 🙁 🙁 🙁

This is the part of the whole situation where it just breaks down for me and I have no idea what the right answer is. I know vaccines aren’t 100% effective at keeping the diseases away, which plays a part too. I know there’s not 100% chance that something bad will happen to the kids who do get vaccines. I really am open to your point – that all kids should have vaccines as an act of service – even if it ends up being a sacrifice – to keep other kids safe. I’m not there yet, but I’m willing to listen to reason and let God work on my heart. I hope Mabel is feeling well!!! Best, Katie

Lisa, I am so sorry to hear that your daughter had to experience a cancer diagnosis and treatment. I can only imagine the heartbreak of having to watch your child go through such a horrible time. I have heard from so many parents recently that are in your shoes exactly. I just read a Facebook note from a dad that was livid because someone at his daughter’s preschool came to school with the chicken pox. His daughter was also immunocompromised due to cancer treatments. I understand that you would want nothing more than for your child to return to their normal lives as much as possible, but I can’t understand why you would choose to send your child to a school situation where you understand the very real possibility that your child could contract something that could kill them. What about the children at your child’s school that ARE being vaccinated, and are subsequently shedding those viruses at school (as is the case with any live vaccine)? Does the school notify parents of immunocompromised children when some other child has recently been vaccinated with a live vaccine so that you can decide to keep your child at home? I’m guessing that they don’t. You never hear the blame for illness placed on them. The fault is always placed on an unvaccinated child. I am not an “anti-vaxxer” mom by any means, but I am pro-parental choice when it comes to vaccines. If my child has had a serious reaction to a vaccine, I reserve the right as his/her parent to opt out of that vaccine in the future. If I believe whole heartedly that injecting my child with the MMR, Varicella, Hep A or a few other vaccines (which all contain residual human DNA from an aborted baby – which can and will insert into the vaccinated child’s genome) could be damaging my child now or in the future, am I really morally obligated (or worse yet, mandated by the state) to put my child in danger to keep your child safe? With the research still outstanding on if this human DNA in some of our vaccines is causing a huge rise in autism, childhood cancers, and autoimmune diseases – I am just not willing to sacrifice the health of my children to benefit the herd. Thankfully for the time being, we don’t have to follow any mandates because we choose to homeschool. The way that the vaccine debate is going though, I can see a federal mandate for all citizens of the US to be fully vaccinated at all times in our near future. Medical tyranny is being imposed upon us and not many people seem to care.

I have a child with autism. In 2001 our doctor along with a couple of other MD’s and Dr. Boyd Haley testified bringing their concerns before the FDA about vaccine safety. The head of the vaccine board at that time said that they knew that there was a link to autism and not only autism , but all auto immune disorders, BUT that they would NEVER go public with this because it would bankrupt the pharmaceutical industry and cause Americans to lose faith in the vaccines…Our doctors were regular MD’s that administered vaccines until having a child of their on harmed and then doing the research found out differently than what they learned in medical school.

My child was one that was harmed by the vaccines. We have done years and years of therapy, biomedical , hyperbarics, chelation, supplements etc . He still has a multitude of problems from this. At that time there was no research at all on this. There is so much information for people that are searching now. Dr. Sherry Tenpenny, Dr. Suzanne Humphries , Dr. Lawrence Palevsky and many more doctors.

It is not just the vaccines, nor just the MMR. It is also the adjuvants in the vaccines such as formaldehyde, gelatin, polysorbate 80, triton x-100, aluminum,proteins and other things. Dr. Tenpenny explains how that the vaccines put the body into an inflammatory cascade reaction by molecular mimicry initiating auto immunity reaching even into the brain.

I believe that parents should have the right to decide what is best for their child. It is the responsibility of the parents to do the research. There is no one on this earth that loves their child and wants the best for them more than they do. I am not against the parents that choose to vaccinate their children,But I am for free choice on this issue and always will be.

Thank you for sharing. So sorry for your struggle. I admire your bravery and taking the time to comment for those of us who needed to hear this. Good to know I am not alone. I have struggled lately under the stress of working, being a mom, and trying so hard not to lose my cool when things get tough. Just knowing that other moms are fighting for change is a huge help!!

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